“Hey,” said a warm voice behind her.
Lena spun around and laughed at the sight that greeted her. Diane’s arms were stuffed with all manner of fatty, salt-laden almost-food.
“Wait, what on earth is that?” Diane frowned, dropping her junk pile on the cushions, and pointed at the Dorstenia gigas. “That wasn’t there before.”
“Wasn’t it?” Lena arched an eyebrow. “It must have just arrived.”
Diane stared at it balefully. “I know I haven’t been gone that long. It’s just…I’m sure I’d have remembered that.”
“Thanks for the snacks,” Lena said. “Bernstein safely inside?”
“Howling like a two-year-old.” Diane gave the plant one last, suspicious glare and flopped on her back.
Lena joined her, settling in closer, enjoying the cozy warmth and her faint smell of cologne. She could get used to this. Whatever this was.
Diane turned to Lena. “Now, what were we discussing? You were telling me what’s up there. What you see when you look.”
Lena didn’t reply immediately. Contentment washed over her as she turned the question around in her mind and realized she felt relaxed in a way that she hadn’t in years. So much had changed since that night at the end of the world, side by side with Nyah. A night when Lena had seen nothing in the heavens but had also realized for the first time just how empty her life really was. She’d gazed at millions of brilliant white stars and finally understood what Nyah had been telling her. That her life didn’t have to stay that way.
“What do I see?”
Lena Martin closed her eyes and smiled.
ABOUT LEE WINTER
Lee Winter is an award-winning veteran newspaper journalist who has lived in almost every Australian state, covering courts, crime, news, features and humour writing. Now a full-time author and part-time editor, Lee is also a 2015 Lambda Literary Award finalist and Golden Crown Literary Award winner. She lives in Western Australia with her long-time girlfriend, where she spends much time ruminating on her garden, US politics, and shiny, new gadgets.
CONNECT WITH LEE
Website: www.leewinterauthor.com
OTHER BOOKS FROM YLVA PUBLISHING
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REQUIEM FOR IMMORTALS
Lee Winter
ISBN: 978-3-95533-711-7 (mobi), 978-3-95533-712-4 (epub)
Length: 86,000 words (263 pages)
Book One in The Law Game series is a dark lesbian thriller with plenty of twists in its tale.
Professional cellist Natalya Tsvetnenko moves seamlessly among the elite where she fills the souls of symphony patrons with beauty even as she takes the lives of the corrupt of Australia’s ruthless underworld. The cold, exacting assassin is hired to kill a woman who seems so innocent that Natalya can’t understand why anyone would want her dead. As she gets to know her target, she can’t work out why she even cares.
EX-WIVES OF DRACULA
ISBN: 978-3-95533-407-9 (mobi), 978-3-95533-408-6 (epub)
Length: 122,000 words (338 pages)
What’s worse than falling in love with a straight girl? Falling in love with a straight girl who drinks blood. And not even in a goth way.
High school senior Mindy Murphy, has been questioning her small town life forever and, more recently, her sexuality. Maybe it has something to do with her new friend, Lucia West. When they were kids they used to be besties, until Lucia grew a head taller and a cup size bigger. Now she’s captain of the cheer team, winner of the Boyfriend Olympics, and voted least likely to remember Mindy at their high school reunion.
In short, possibly the worst person alive for Mindy to crush on. Especially after Lucia’s bitten by a vampire. Now the only way to keep her alive is to get her blood, and the only way to cure her is to slay the vampire that turned her.
Who knows, maybe after they get this vampire business settled, Lucia can explain to Mindy why she kissed her.
THE TEA MACHINE
Gill McKnight
ISBN: 978-3-95533-429-1 (mobi), 978-3-95533-430-7 (epub)
Length: 97,000 words (321 pages)
The story of a love that never dies…except it does, over and over again.
London 1862, and Millicent Aberly, spinster by choice, has found her future love—in the future! She meddled with her brother’s time machine and has been catapulted into an alternative world where the Roman Empire has neither declined nor fell. In fact, it has gone on to annex most of the known universe.
Millicent is rescued from Rome’s greatest enemy, the giant space squid, by Sangfroid, a tough and wily centurion who, unfortunately, dies while protecting her. Wracked by guilt and a peculiar fascination for the woman soldier, Millicent is determined to return in time and save Sangfroid from her fatal heroics. Instead, she finds her sexy centurion in her own timeline. And Sangfroid is not alone; several stowaways have come along with her.
Soon Millicent’s mews house is overrun with Roman space warriors and giant squid.
DEFENSIVE MINDSET
Wendy Temple
ISBN: 978-3-95533-838-1 (mobi), 978-3-95533-839-8 (epub)
Length: 100,000 words (276 pages)
Star footballer and successful businesswoman Jessie Grainger has her life set, and doesn’t need anything getting in the way. That includes rebellious rival player Fran Docherty, a burnt-out barmaid with a past as messed up as her attitude. So when the clashing pair find themselves on the same Edinburgh women’s football team, how will they survive each other, let alone play to win?
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THE POWER OF MERCY
Fiona Zedde
To her family, Mai Redstone is weak. Her shape-shifting power is nowhere near as impressive as their abilities to literally alter the world around them. But when she puts on the costume to become Mercy, a rooftop-climbing chameleon with a thousand disguises and at least nine lives, she feels almost invincible. When a local politician is murdered and the police call Mercy in to help, the stability Mai has built out of past pain threatens to crumble. The dead politician turns out to be her uncle, a man who made her childhood a living hell. Caught between giving a medal to the killer and being forced to find the murderer for her family, Mai must make the difficult choice between family loyalty and self-preservation. Mercy is a blade that can cut both ways.
© 2017 by Lee Winter
ISBN (mobi): 978-3-95533-564-9
ISBN (epub): 978-3-95533-565-6
Also available as paperback.
Published by Ylva Publishing, legal entity of Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.
Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.
Owner: Astrid Ohletz
Am Kirschgarten 2
65830 Kriftel
Germany
www.ylva-publishing.com
First edition: 2017
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Credits
Edited by Astrid Ohletz
Proofread by Joanie Bassler
Cover Design and Print Layout by Streetlight Graphics
Table of Contents
Other books by Lee Winter
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter
11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
About Lee Winter
Other Books from Ylva Publishing
Coming from Ylva Publishing